Attendees at yesterday's quarterly DAL meeting were asked to provide feedback on the free trade organisation's continued involvement in the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG), which is the forum for "all the important decisions about the future of the [global] print industry".
While the DAL is able to pay for its GWG membership using money supplied by its sponsors, which include Censhare, Fujifilm, Kodak, Lineup and LGS, the cost of sending a representative to the quarterly meetings is more onerous.
Historically, both the BPIF and the PPA have taken part in the GWG. However, the PPA has cancelled its membership for the current year and the BPIF has not sent a representative to the past few quarterly meetings.
This has left DAL steering committee member Andy Psarianos, of FE Burman, as the UK's sole representative, with the cost of his attendance largely unsupported.
Speaking at the DAL meeting, John Charnock, former St Ives technical director and founder of Print Research International, said: "There is a serious risk that the British printing industry could not be represented because of a lack of funding from the industry itself.
"The DAL is happy to pay for the membership but we're going to need help to send someone to all the meetings. Surely it is not beyond the will of the UK print industry to get one representative [to the GWG meetings], especially as they are making decisions that will affect all of us."
Psarianos added: "The UK has always had strong representation inside GWG and that has been fundamental because the UK market is very sophisticated and it has very specific needs."
According to BPIF corporate affairs director Andy Brown, the trade body's usual representative, technical services director Peter Vincent, has been unable to attend the past few meetings.
However, he said that the BPIF continued to "greatly value its membership" and "remained committed" to the GWG.
The next GWG meeting is scheduled for 29-30 April in Germany, followed by another in Ghent, Belgium, from 15-16 July with another in New York, US, in October.
